The Sheikh's Prize(5)

Zahir surveyed her with smoulderingly bright eyes, instantly resenting   her effect on him. 'Since we parted, you've cost me over five million   pounds. Maybe I was curious to see what I was paying for. Maybe I even   thought I might be due something in return...'

Angry resentment surged from the base of Saffy's insecurity and   discomfiture. How dared he talk back to her as if he had done nothing   wrong?

'Just you stop right there... Are you out of your mind?' she blazed back   at him full tilt. 'What the heck gives you the right to bring me here   when I don't want to be here?'

'I wanted to speak to you.'

'But we've got nothing to talk about!' Saffy scissored back without   pausing to draw breathe. 'I never expected to see you again in this   lifetime and I don't want to speak to you, not even to find out why   you're talking about five million pounds that I certainly didn't   receive!'

'You're a liar,' he retorted quietly, using that deadly quietness he had   always had the power to deploy once he had got her to screaming point.   It was impossible to deflect Zahir from his target.                       
       
           



       

'I have to ask-on the score of the five million pounds you   mentioned-what planet are you living on? I haven't had a penny from you   since I started working!' Saffy snapped out of all patience while   desperately trying to recapture her cool and with it her wits.

'Denial won't cut it,' Zahir scissored back with cool contempt. 'I have   paid you substantial alimony since the day you left Maraban-'

'No way!' Saffy sizzled back at him, enraged by his condemnation. After   all, she was very proud of her independence and of the fact that she  had  never taken advantage of his great wealth, believing as she had  that  their short-lived and unsuccessful marriage gave her no right to  expect  his continuing support. 'That is a complete lie, Zahir. You gave  me  money when I first left and I needed to use that until I started   earning. But I never wanted alimony from you...I told my solicitor that   and he must have informed you.'

'No, since your departure the money has been paid every month into a   trust fund and none of it has ever been returned,' Zahir informed her   with infuriating certainty. 'But at this moment I should warn you that   that may not be your most pressing problem.'

Saffy gritted her teeth. She was shaking with rage and shocked by the   speed with which her usually easy temper had gone skyward. She had   forgotten, oh, dear heaven, she had actually forgotten how easily Zahir   could push her buttons. 'Why? What may be my most pressing problem?'  she  slung back scornfully, hot pink adorning both her cheeks.

'You and your colleagues shot your commercial without first lodging a   request for permission to do so from the Ministry of the Interior.'

'I know nothing about that!' Saffy proclaimed in instant dismissal of   the charge. 'I've got nothing to do with the legal requirements or   arrangements for filming abroad-I'm just the model. I go where I'm told   and you had better believe that Maraban was the last place on earth I   wanted to come!'

Zahir tensed, an even brighter sliver of gold lightening his dark eyes. 'Why so? Maraban is a beautiful country.'

'Surely that view depends on your standards of beauty?' Saffy snapped   back with lashings of scorn. 'Maraban is eighty per cent desert!'

The gold effect in his eyes heightened to flame level. 'Had you still   been my wife I would have been ashamed of your narrow outlook!'

Saffy loosed a cutting laugh. 'Mercifully for me I'm no longer your wife!'

The insult made him tense even more, his big shoulders squaring, the   wall of his strong abdominal muscles tightening visibly below his shirt.   His eyes held her fast, held her as completely as if he had her   pinioned to a wall, those extraordinarily beautiful eyes of his set   below well-defined ebony brows, eyes rimmed with thick curling black   lashes and stormily bright with aggression. 'Mercifully for us both,' he   murmured levelly.

Inexplicably his agreement wounded her and she sucked in a sudden surge   of air to fill her deflated lungs in the seething silence and decided  to  concentrate on basics. 'So the shoot took place without permission  from  some authority-what does that mean?'

'That the film was confiscated at the hotel where you and the crew were staying,' Zahir advanced grimly.

Saffy took a hasty step forward. 'Confiscated?' she repeated in horror. 'You can't do that!'

'I can do anything I like when people break the law in Maraban,' Zahir responded levelly. 'Filming was not authorised.'

'But you have the power to overlook it. I'm sure the company just made a   mistake if they didn't seek permission. The location was changed at  the  very last minute-there probably wasn't time!' she protested. 'Is  that  why you've brought me here? To tell me this?'

'No...I wanted to see you again,' Zahir confided with shocking cool.

And she remembered the shock of that honest streak of his, his ability   to cut through all the rubbish people could spout and hit the bottom   line without hesitation or embarrassment. 'Why would you want to see me   again?' she prompted stiltedly.

'You only have to look in the mirror to know why,' he fielded without   skipping a beat. 'I want you. Just once I want what should have been   mine when I married you and what you have since given to other men...'

Shock engulfed Saffy in a tidal wave. She moved back from him again in   dismay, disbelief and bewilderment. Her ex wanted her to have sex with   him?

'Unless, of course,' Zahir murmured silkily, 'you truly do find me physically repulsive...'                       
       
           



       

Saffy backed away another step, thinking that there was surely not a   woman alive who could find Zahir repulsive. She certainly didn't; never   had, in fact. Was that the impression she had left him with? Guilt   rippled through her, for she was agonisingly aware that he could not   possibly have overcome her problems for her five years earlier. It had   taken years of therapy for Saffy to find the solution and to come to   terms with what she had learned about herself during the process.

'If you can convince me that you do, I will let you go,' Zahir purred, literally stalking her across the room with fluid steps.

Zahir wanted to sleep with her. So, tell me something new, a wry little   voice said inside her head. It was like being plunged back into her   marriage without warning, unable to give him what he wanted and needed.   The most appalling sense of inadequacy gripped her afresh. She had   failed him and not surprisingly he was bitter. But that was no excuse   whatsoever for his current behaviour. 'You virtually kidnapped me!' she   accused rawly.

'I sent you flowers and an air-conditioned limo. How many kidnappers do that?'

'You've got to be crazy... I mean, are you even thinking about what   you're doing?' Saffy gasped, stepping back against a piece of furniture   and sidling sideways to avoid it and to keep moving further out of his   reach.

'I don't think around you,' Zahir muttered flatly. 'I never did.'

Saffy was more than willing to kick his brain back into gear. 'Zahir, you're a king...royalty doesn't do stuff like this!'

Zahir flung back his darkly handsome head and laughed with rich   appreciation, even white teeth flashing against his bronzed skin.   'Sapphire...my father kept a harem of a hundred concubines in this   palace. Until very recently indeed, royalty did indeed do things that   were neither socially nor morally acceptable.'

'Your father? Had a harem here?' Saffy parroted in consternation, her   heart beating so fast as he stalked closer that she was convinced it   might burst right out of her chest. She refused even to think of that   nasty old man, Fareed, having had a hundred unfortunate women locked up   to fulfil his gruesome requirements. It wasn't a surprise though: her   father-in-law had been an out-and-out lech.

'I have no harem...no wife,' Zahir pointed out.

'Those are the only positives you have to offer in your own favour?' Her   voice was careening up and down as if she were on a vocal seesaw. She   was locked into his eyes, those amazingly beautiful amber eyes, which   had struck her like a thunderbolt at eighteen across a crowded   department store. 'Stay back...'

'No, been there, done that, paid the price,' Zahir countered, running a   forefinger slowly down over her cheekbone so that in some strange way  it  seemed perfectly normal to turn her cheek into his hand.